Skeleton Key

by Anthony Horowitz

And then it happened. Alex heard a metallic buzz and, in front of his eyes, the stalagmites rose out of the floor and the stalactites dropped out of the ceiling, teeth that skewered the shark not once, but five or six times. Blood exploded into the water. Alex saw the dreadful eyes as its head whipped from side to side. He could almost imagine the creature howling in pain. It was completely trapped, as if in the jaws of a monster even more dreadful than itself. How had it happened? Alex hung in the water, shocked and uncomprehending. Slowly the blood cleared. And he understood.

  Turner and Troy had been wrong a second time. Sarov had known about the Devil’s Chimney and he had made sure that nobody could reach it by swimming through the cave. The stalagmites and stalactites were fake. They were made of metal, not stone, and were mounted on some sort of hydraulic spring. Swimming into the cave, the shark must have activated an infra-red beam which in turn had triggered the ambush. Even as he watched, the deadly spears retracted, sliding back into the floor and ceiling. There was a hum and the body of the shark was sucked into the cave, disappearing into a trap. So the place even had its own disposal system! Alex was beginning to understand the nature of the man who lived in the Casa de Oro. Whatever else he might be, Sarov left nothing to chance.

  And now he knew what had happened to the two CIA agents. Alex felt sick. All he wanted to do was get away. Not just out of the water but out of the country. He wished he had never come.

  There was still a lot of blood in the water. Alex swam quickly, afraid that it would attract more sharks. But he paced himself, carefully measuring his ascent towards the surface. If a diver rises too quickly, nitrogen gets trapped in the bloodstream causing the painful and potentially lethal sickness known as the bends. That was the last thing Alex needed right now. He spent five minutes at three metres’ depth – a final safety stop – then came up for air. The whole world had changed while he had been underwater. The sun had rolled behind the horizon and the sky, the sea, the land, the very air itself had become suffused with the deepest crimson. He could see Garcia’s boat, a dark shadow, about twenty metres away and swam over to it. Suddenly he was cold. His teeth were chattering – although they had probably been chattering from the moment he had seen the shark.

  Alex reached the side of the boat. Garcia was still sitting on the deck with a cigarette between his lips but didn’t offer to help him out.

  “Thanks a bunch,” Alex muttered.

  He slipped off his BCD – the oxygen tank came with it – and heaved it onto the boat, then pulled himself out of the water. He winced. Out of the water, he could feel the wounds that the coral had inflicted on his limbs. But there was no time to do anything about that now. As soon as he was standing on the deck, he unhooked his weight belt and dumped it to one side along with his mask and snorkel. There was a towel in Turner’s bag. He took it out and used it to rub himself dry. Then he went over to Garcia.

  “We have to go,” he said. “Turner and Troy are dead. The cave is a trap. Do you understand? You have to take me back to the hotel.”

  Garcia still said nothing. For the first time, Alex noticed something about the cigarette in the man’s mouth. It wasn’t actually lit. Suddenly uneasy, Alex reached out. Garcia fell forward. There was a knife sticking out of his back.

  Alex felt something hard touch him between his shoulder blades and a voice, which seemed to have trouble with the words it was saying, whispered from somewhere behind him.

  “A little late to be out swimming, I think. I advise you now to keep very still.”

  A speedboat which had been lurking in the shadows on the other side of the diving boat roared to life, lights blazing. Alex stood where he was. Two more men climbed onboard, both of them speaking in Spanish. He just had time to glimpse the dark, grinning face of one of Sarov’s macheteros before a sack was thrown over his head. Something touched his arm and he felt a sting and knew that he had just been injected with a hypodermic syringe. Almost at once, the strength went out of his legs and he would have collapsed but for the invisible hands that held him up.

  And then he was lifted up and carried away. Alex began to wonder if it would have made any difference if the shark had reached him after all. The men who were carrying him off the boat were treating him like someone who was already dead.

  THE CRUSHER

  Alex couldn’t move.

  He was lying on his back on a hard, sticky surface. When he tried to raise his shoulders, he felt his T-shirt clinging to whatever it was underneath him. It was as if he had been glued into place. Whatever had been injected into him had removed all power of movement from his arms and legs. The bag still covered his head, keeping him in darkness. He knew that he had been loaded into the speedboat and taken back to the coast. Some sort of van had met him and brought him here. He had heard footsteps and rough hands had grabbed him, carrying him like a sack of vegetables. He guessed that three or four men had been involved in the journey, but they had barely spoken. Once he had heard the same man who had spoken to him on the boat. He had muttered a couple of words in Spanish. But his voice was so indistinct, the words so garbled, that Alex had found it hard to understand what he was saying.

  Fingers brushed against the side of his neck and suddenly the bag was removed. Alex blinked. He was lying in a brightly lit warehouse or factory; the first thing he saw was the metal framework supporting the roof, with arc lamps hanging down. The walls were bare brick, whitewashed, the floor lined with terracotta tiles. There was machinery on both sides of him. Most of it looked agricultural and a hundred years out of date. There were chains and buckets and a complicated pulley system that fed into a series of metal wheels that could have come out of a giant antique watch, and next to them, a pair of earthenware cauldrons. Alex twisted round and saw more cauldrons on the other side and, in the distance, some sort of filtration system with pipes leading everywhere. He realized now that he was lying on a long conveyor belt. He tried once again to get up or even roll off, but his body wouldn’t obey him.

  A man stepped into his line of vision.

  Alex looked up into a pair of eyes that weren’t actually quite a pair. They weren’t positioned correctly in the man’s face and one of them was bloodshot. Alex wondered if it could even see. The man had been horribly injured at some time. He was bald on one side of his head, but not on the other. His mouth was slanting. His skin was dead. In a beauty contest, he wouldn’t even come a close second to the great white shark.

  There were a couple of dark, unsmiling workers standing behind him. They were shabbily dressed, with moustaches and bandanas. Neither of them spoke. They seemed keenly interested in what was about to happen.

  “Your name?” The movements of the man’s mouth didn’t quite match what he was saying, so seeing him speak was a bit like watching a badly dubbed film.

  “Alex Gardiner,” Alex said.

  “Your real name?”

  “I just told you.”

  “You lied. Your real name is Alex Rider.”

  “Why ask if you think you know?”

  The man nodded as if Alex had asked a fair question. “My name is Conrad,” he said. “We have met before.”

  “Have we?” Alex tried to think. Then he remembered. The man he had seen limping down the boardwalk in Miami wearing sunglasses and a straw hat! It was the same man.

  Conrad leaned forward. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I’m on vacation with my mom and dad.” Alex decided it was time to pretend he was just an ordinary fourteen year old. “Where are they?” he demanded. “Why have you brought me here? What happened to the man on the boat? I want to go home!”

  “Where is your home?” Conrad asked.

  “I live in LA. De Flores Street, west Hollywood.”

  “No.” There was no doubt at all in Conrad’s voice. “Your accent is very convincing, but you are not American. You are English. The people you came with were called Tom Turner and Belinda Troy. They were agents of the CIA. They are now dead.”

  “I don’
t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  Conrad smiled. At least, one side of his mouth smiled. The other could only manage a slight twitch. “Lying to me is stupid and a waste of time. I have to know why you are here,” he said. “It is an unusual experience to interrogate a child, but it is one I shall enjoy. You are the only one left. So tell me, Alex Rider, why did you come to Cayo Esqueleto? What were you planning to do?”

  “I wasn’t planning to do anything!” Despite everything, Alex thought it was worth one last try. He was still speaking with an American accent. “My dad’s a film producer. He’s got nothing to do with the CIA. Who are you? And why have you brought me here?”

  “I am losing my patience!” Conrad took a break, as if the effort of talking was too much for him. “Tell me what I want to know.”

  “I’m on vacation!” Alex said. “I’ve already told you!”

  “You have told me lies. Now you will tell me the truth.”

  Conrad leaned down and picked up a large metal box with two buttons – one red, one green – attached to a thick cable. He pressed the green button. At once, Alex felt a jolt underneath him. An alarm bell rang. Somewhere in the distance there was a loud whine as a machine started up. A few seconds later, the conveyor began to move.

  Using all his strength, Alex fought against the drug that was in his system, forcing his head up so that he could look over his feet. What he saw sent a spasm of shock all the way through him. His head swam and he thought he was going to faint. The conveyor belt was carrying him towards two huge, spinning grindstones about seven metres away. They were so close to each other they were almost touching. There was one underneath and one on top. The belt stopped just at the point where they met. Alex was slumped helplessly on the belt. There was nothing he could do. He was moving towards the grindstones at a rate of about ten centimetres a second. It would take him a little over a minute to reach them. When he did finally get there, he would be crushed. That was the death that this man had arranged for him.

  “Do you know how sugar was produced?” Conrad asked. “This place, where you are now, is a sugar mill. The machinery used to be steam-powered but now it is electric. The sugar cane was delivered here by the colonos – the farmers. It was shredded and then placed on a belt to be crushed. After that it was filtered. Water was allowed to evaporate. Then the remaining syrup was placed in cauldrons and heated so that it formed crystals.” Conrad paused to draw breath. “You, Alex, are at the beginning of that process. You are about to be fed into the crusher. I ask you to imagine the pain that lies ahead of you. Your toes will enter first. Then you will be sucked in one centimetre at a time. After your toes, your feet. Your legs and your knees. How much of you will pass through before you are allowed the comfort of death? Think about it! Whatever else it is, I can promise you that it will not be sweet.”

  Conrad raised the box with the two buttons. “Tell me what I want to know and I will press the red button. It stops the machine.”

  “You’re wrong!” Alex shouted. “You can’t do this!”

  “I am doing this. And I am never wrong. Please, do not waste any more time. You have so little of it left…”

  Alex lifted his head up again. The grindstones were getting closer with every second that passed. He could feel their vibration, transmitted down the conveyor belt.

  “How much did the agents know?” Conrad demanded. “Why were they here?”

  Alex slumped back. The pounding of the two stones enveloped him. He looked past Conrad at the other two men. Would they let him do this? But their faces were impassive. “Please…!” he shouted. Then stopped himself. There was no mercy in this man. He had seen that at once. He gritted his teeth, biting back his fear. He wanted to cry. He could actually feel the tears in his eyes. This wasn’t what he wanted. He had never asked to be a spy. Why should he be expected to die like one?

  “You have perhaps fifty seconds more,” Conrad said.

  And that was when Alex made up his mind. There was no point in going silently to this bloody and unspeakable death. This wasn’t a World War Two film with him as the hero. He was a schoolboy and everyone – Blunt, Mrs Jones, the CIA – had lied to him and played tricks on him to get him here. Anyway, Conrad already knew who he was. He had called him by his real name. Conrad knew that Troy and Turner had been American spies. There was only one piece of information he could add. The CIA were looking for a nuclear bomb. And why shouldn’t he tell Conrad that? Maybe it would be enough to stop him using it.

  “They were searching for a bomb!” he cried out. “A nuclear bomb. They know Sarov bought uranium from the Salesman. They came here with a Geiger counter. They were going to break into the villa and look for the bomb.”

  “How did they know?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The rumbling and pounding was louder than ever. Alex looked up and saw the stones less than three metres away. Air was rushing between them and flowing over him. He could feel the breeze cold on his skin. The fact that he wasn’t tied down, that his arms and legs were free, only made it all the worse. He couldn’t move! The drug had turned him into a piece of living meat on its way to the mincer. Perspiration flowed down the side of his face then followed the line of his jaw and curved behind his neck.

  “It was Turner!” Alex yelled. “He found out from the Salesman. He was working undercover. They found out that he’d sold you the uranium and they came here looking for the bomb.”

  “Did they know the purpose of the bomb?”

  “No! I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. Now stop the machine and let me go.”

  Conrad considered for a moment. The box was still in his hand.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “What?” Alex screamed the single word. He could barely hear himself above the noise of the grindstones.

  “You’ve been a bad boy,” Conrad said. “And bad boys have to be punished.”

  “But you said—”

  “I lied. Just like you. But of course I must kill you. You are of no further use…”

  Alex went mad. He opened his mouth and screamed, trying to find the strength to separate himself from the conveyor belt. His brain knew what it wanted. His body refused to obey. It was useless. He jerked upwards. His feet were moving ever closer to the spinning stones. Conrad took a step back. He was going to watch as Alex was fed through the crusher. The two workers behind him would clear up when it was over.

  “No!” Alex howled.

  “Goodbye, Alex,” Conrad said.

  And then – another voice. In another language. One that Alex didn’t understand.

  Conrad said something. Alex could no longer hear. The man’s lips moved but any sound was snatched away by the roar of the machine.

  Alex’s bare toes were being battered by the wind that was forced through the stones. They were five centimetres away from being crushed. Four centimetres, three centimetres, two centimetres…

  There was a gunshot.

  Sparks. The smell of smoke.

  The grindstones were still spinning. But the conveyor belt had stopped. Alex’s feet were jutting over the end of the belt. He could almost feel the spinning stone racing past his toes.

  Then the voice came again, speaking now in English.

  “My dear Alex. I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

  Alex tried to reply with the worst swear-word he knew. But it wouldn’t come. He couldn’t even breathe.

  With a sense of gratitude, he passed out.

  * * *

  “You will have to forgive Conrad. He is an excellent assistant and useful in so many ways. But he can also be a little … over-enthusiastic.”

  Alex had woken up in the most magnificent bedroom he had ever seen. He was lying on a four poster bed opposite a floor-to-ceiling mirror in an ornate gold frame. All the furniture in the room was antique and wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum. There was a painted chest
at the foot of the bed, a massive wardrobe with elaborately carved doors, a chandelier with five curving arms. The shutters on the windows had been folded back to reveal a wrought iron balustrade looking out over a courtyard.

  The man, who had introduced himself as General Alexei Sarov, was sitting on a chair next to the mirror, dressed in a dark suit. His legs were crossed. His back was completely straight. Alex examined the face with its grey hair and intelligent blue eyes. He recognized his voice from the sugar mill and knew – without knowing why – that it was the general who had saved him.

  It was dark outside. Alex guessed it must be after midnight. Someone had dressed him in a white nightshirt that came down to his knees. He wondered how long he had been asleep. And how long the Russian had been waiting for him to wake up.

  “Do you want something to eat?” That had been his first question.

  “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”

  “A drink then?”

  “Some water…”

  “I have some here.”

  The water came in a silver jug, served in a gleaming crystal glass. General Sarov poured it himself, then handed it to Alex. Alex reached out, grateful that the drug Conrad had pumped into him had worn off while he was asleep and that he could move his arms again. He sipped. The water was ice-cold. That was when Sarov began his apology, speaking in faultless English.

  “Conrad had no orders to eliminate you. On the contrary, when I found out who you were, I very much wanted to meet you.”

  Alex wondered about that, but decided to ignore it for the moment. “How did you find out who I was?” he asked. There seemed no point in denying it now.

  “We have a very sophisticated security system both here and in Havana.” The general seemed uninterested in explaining more. “I’m afraid you’ve had a terrible ordeal.”

  “The people I came here with had a worse one.”

  Again the general raised a hand, brushing aside the details. “Your friends are dead. Were they your friends, Alex?” A brief pause. “I was of course perfectly well aware of the Devil’s Chimney when I first moved into the Casa de Oro. I had a simple defence mechanism constructed. Diving is prohibited on this side of the island so when the occasional diver is foolish enough to enter the cave, he is only paying the price of his curiosity. They tell me that a shark was killed there…”